A journal researching the life and times of John "Mad Jack" Fuller (1757-1834).

Saturday, March 07, 2015

The Hermit in the Garden: From Imperial Rome to Ornamental Gnome

by Gordon Campbell, Oxford University Press, 2013

"In 1777 John Fuller, who is popularly but inaccurately known
as Mad Jack Fuller (he seems to have been wholly sane), inherited from his
uncle the family estate of Rose Hill, in Brightling (Sussex). After a tumultuous political career, in the
course of which he defended he living conditions of plantation slaves (he owned
a plantation in Jamaica) and was ejected from the House of Commons for
drunkenness, Fuller left parliament at the dissolution of 1812 and settled at
Rose Hill, where he had already embarked on the construction of a memorable set
of follies. He began with a Coadestone (i.e. ceramic) summer house with a ‘Tudor’
arch (restored in 1992) and went on to commission his own mausoleum (an 8-metre
high pyramid in Brightling churchyard), a rotunda garden temple, an obelisk
known as the Needle, a hermit’s tower and a building known as the Sugar Loaf
(an 11-metre cone which alludes to his sugar plantation).

The 8-metre hermit’s tower was built with a view to accommodating
an ornamental hermit, and Fuller is said to have advertised for a hermit with
the usual conditions of service. Here,
for example is the account in Follies: A National Trust Guide:

"The
requirements were a little excessive: no shaving, no washing, no

cutting
of hair and nails, no conversation with any outsider for a period

of
seven years, after which the happy hermit would be made a Gentleman.

No
takers.”

I have not been able to trace the advertisement. The reason for this failure, I think, is that
there was no advertisement. Fuller’s
follies are enigmatic, and myths have emerged from the fog of uncertainty. Fuller is said, for example, to be interred
in his pyramid sitting at a table dressed for dinner, with a bottle of claret
awaiting consumption. In the same way,
the tower, which may have been a viewing platform for Bodiam Castle (which
Fuller owned and restored), is now known as the hermit’s tower. It has been expertly restored by the British
Gypsum Company, and tourists can climb to the top to enjoy the view, but Fuller’s
intention to accommodate a hermit in the building is a harmless fantasy devised
long after his death."